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Dessert

Queen Cakes

A buttery currant cake baked in small tins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Queen Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Sift the baking powder with the flour onto a sheet of paper.

Make the batter

  1. In a clean bowl, cream together the butter, caster sugar, and cream or milk until light.

  2. Add the egg and mix well.

  3. Stir in the flour and currants, adding milk to achieve cake batter consistency.

  4. Pour the mixture into small greased tins.

Bake

  1. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 30 to 45 minutes.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creams with the sugar to trap air, giving the cake a light, tender crumb and rich flavour.
Egg
Adds structure and richness, helping the batter bind and set as it bakes.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake once it sets in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter during baking, helping the cake rise.
Castor sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a light texture when creamed with butter.

The step that matters

Creaming the butter and sugar until light. Beating air into the butter and sugar creates the bubbles that the cake rises on. Under-creaming leaves a dense cake, so the mixture should look pale and fluffy before the egg is added.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, sugar, egg, cream, lemon):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, sugar, egg, cream, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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